Hacker News: cragfar

New comment by cragfar in "Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes"

cragfar — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 18:49:45 +0000

They didn't do it because of oil (well to take for ourselves). They did it because Venezuela has been cozying up way too much to Russia and China, and sending both of them a lot of oil.

New comment by cragfar in "GSA Eliminates 18F"

cragfar — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 14:22:11 +0000

You're missing that those 80% are not the same people every year. The IRS definitely doesn't keep a database of who is married or not, nor are they scouring every counties database for changes. I'm not sure where you're getting the "they will just send you a letter" part.

New comment by cragfar in "Ask HN: What are some impressive small features you've seen?"

cragfar — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 00:29:03 +0000

I think a couple more have caught on, but Netflix was one of the first I think to let you press a button to finish your email login for popular email providers. So you could press the "@gmail.com" button instead of typing it all out. Doesn't really matter on a computer, but was nice when signing in on a TV.

New comment by cragfar in "Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%"

cragfar — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 19:24:22 +0000

> We're left to guess what this means. What's work around the work? If that work is now unsavory, why can't they work on work rather than around it? Is this describing reducing the management layer? (support) or customer/partner support? Will they be replaced by automation? I get you don't want to go into specifics of who's let go, but then don't pretend you're providing a clear analysis, and don't give a washed out business lingo salad instead.

> TBH I don't see what changed on Spotify for a customer perspective in the past few years. I still see bugs I reported years ago, the UI is largely the same.

He didn't get into it because you answered it yourself. And anyone who has used it for a while has most likely the same initial thought.

New comment by cragfar in "Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts"

cragfar — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 01:23:17 +0000

It used to provide some limited banking services up until the 60s and it still does billions of dollars worth of money orders a year so a lot of the infrastructure is still there.

New comment by cragfar in "Amazon's Alexa Telling Users That 2020 Election Was Rigged"

cragfar — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 14:24:56 +0000

> It's an interesting (and scary/depressing) subject to think about - what proportion of people would or wouldn't find that acceptable in even more extreme circumstance?

"Right side of history" isn't used just to sound cool. It's to embolden opinions like his. Same with the description of "just a bunch of old white men".

New comment by cragfar in "WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight"

cragfar — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 22:33:39 +0000

No idea how true it is, but I overheard someone on a flight say that whenever you feel a real sudden jolt on a plan it's really only moving like 2-3ft.

New comment by cragfar in "Amazon Andy Jassy shouldn’t make RTO decisions in echo chamber of CEOs feelings"

cragfar — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 21:07:03 +0000

Jassy and Zuckerberg have both said that new employees (even experienced hires) are underperforming compared the workers who were in an office setting at some point. With a couple of years of turnover, that can compound quite a bit.

New comment by cragfar in "IRS moves forward with a new free-file tax return system"

cragfar — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 21:33:37 +0000

>Also they could put a website where you could spend five minutes entering the most common information they don't already know, and then spit out your bill.

That's basically what they're doing.

New comment by cragfar in "IRS moves forward with a new free-file tax return system"

cragfar — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 21:32:30 +0000

There's really no point in continuing this discussion if you think the IRS is scraping data of every county in the US for marital status changes.

New comment by cragfar in "IRS moves forward with a new free-file tax return system"

cragfar — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 21:27:19 +0000

When the 1040EZ was a thing, only 16% of filers used it. Those would be the candidates who could safely have the IRS do their return. With anyone else, there's all kinds of information the IRS has no clue about.

New comment by cragfar in "IRS moves forward with a new free-file tax return system"

cragfar — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 21:24:11 +0000

They definitely don't have all that information. That was my point.

New comment by cragfar in "IRS moves forward with a new free-file tax return system"

cragfar — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 21:08:17 +0000

Because you could have gotten married, been blinded, and started a business grossing $900k but only netting $100k a year and they would know none of that outside of a couple of 1099s. What they did for you though is look at your return, and saw you didn't declare investment income that they knew about from a 1099.

New comment by cragfar in "Disney, Netflix, and more are fighting FTC's 'click to cancel' proposal"

cragfar — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 18:54:18 +0000

It's not and 99% of the time it's blatant user error. Like the guys top post that is refusing to believe his father slammed the re-subscribe button when sharing his account with him.

New comment by cragfar in "Big VC, Tech Got Backstop for Billions in Uninsured SVB Deposits"

cragfar — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 17:03:08 +0000

>Running a business involves taking and managing risk.

There's really no decent option for most businesses to mitigate this risk. Most services you find can only do up to a couple million.

New comment by cragfar in "Now Reddit are coming for the individual personal subreddits"

cragfar — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 18:14:19 +0000

Maybe some did but the support is vastly overblown. r/nba did a poll (never stickied it) and 8,000 people voted. 72% in favor of privating the subredddit. On a random Thursday afternoon it has 33,000 people online. And the polls were posted in r/modcoord.

New comment by cragfar in "FTC sues Amazon for tricking customers into signing up for Prime"

cragfar — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 15:16:43 +0000

I cancelled Amazon Prime a couple of months ago and have made a couple of purchases since. I'm not sure how they can people are tricked into signing up for it. I would say brow beaten is a better word since you have to click like three prompts basically stating you're some kind of freak who doesn't want the convenience of Prime and its many benefits.

New comment by cragfar in "Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout"

cragfar — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 15:49:43 +0000

There already is a function that gives a subreddit its norms and structure. It's the upvote and downvote tool. Mods should not be shaping a subreddit, that's not moderating.

New comment by cragfar in "Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout"

cragfar — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 15:10:59 +0000

A sane CEO would instantly ban all the participating mods of the larger subreddits. And then pick off the rest that didn't get the message.

New comment by cragfar in "Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private"

cragfar — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 13:30:30 +0000

>They merely got there first, finders keepers.

That hasn't really been the case for a while. Especially for the larger subs like r/videos. R/news for example was created 15 years ago and it's oldest mod was modded two years ago. Also the admins come in and remove top mods of problematic subs (generally alt right/brigading subs) all the time.